The Best of Latin Jazz

Latin Jazz has been an important and evolving current in jazz since the mid-1940s, when Dizzy Gillespie invited the legendary Cuban conga drummer Chano Pozo to join his big band. This LP compiles some of the genre’s finest performances. Latin rhythms were present in jazz even earlier than the 1940s, like in Louis Armstrong’s 1930 “The Peanut Vendor” (a reworking of Cuban pianist and conductor Moisés Simons’ “El Manicero”). Even such an iconic jazz piece as W. C. Handy’s 1914 “St. Louis Blues” has a habanera-tresillo bass line.